Officer Characteristics Research Articles

Perceived Characteristics of Effective Correctional Officers by Officers, Supervisors, and Inmates Across Three Different Types of lnstitutions

Perceived Characteristics of Effective Correctional Officers by Officers, Supervisors, and Inmates Across Three Different Types of lnstitutions

Job stress in police work: An exploratory analysis into structural causes

Police stress has received intermittent coverage in the literature for the last decade, and it remains a constant source of discussion today. One of the reoccurring problems with stress studies is that they attempt to examine the phenomenon globally. This almost always leads to generalized findings which may be representative of the overall problem, but certainly fail to adequately micro-examine the intracies of the issue. This article examines perceptions of stress relative to the demographic and assignment characteristics of police officers in a medium sized city. It identifies three specific patterns and suggests directions for additional research.

Commercial Lending Officer and Small Business Client Relationships

This article presents the results of an April 1986 mail survey of small business firms in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, concerning the relationship with their commercial bank lending officer. The survey examined loan types and rates, types of collateral,and bank and officer characteristics. Results indicate that 1) secured lines of credit were the most common loan type, 2) the reputation of the bank was the most important characteristic, 3) personal guarantees were the most common collateral type, and forty small businesses rely heavily upon the expertise and support of their commercial lending officers the businesses would seldom change banks for a half percent rate advantage.

Body composition and physiological characteristics of law enforcement officers.

The physical work capacity, body composition, and physiological characteristics of 12 law enforcement officers (9 males, 3 females) were measured. Subjects included a representative sample from the occupational categories of detective, staff, investigative and patrol officer. Mean maximal oxygen uptake of the men was 42.1 +/- 8.9 ml.kg-1min-1 with mean values of 41.5 +/- 8.7 ml.kg-1min-1 for the women. Measurement of body composition indicated an average of 24.4 +/- 7.1% body fat for the men and 30.9 +/- 1.2% for the women. Muscular power, strength, and endurance as measured by isolated limb flexion-extension movement and fitness test performance was considered average with no excessive bilateral differences. The results of this study were compared with other investigations of law enforcement officers of similar age groups. The officers displayed average or above health and physical fitness scores for their age classification and were able to complete all police task-oriented tests.

APPLICANT RACE AND JOB PLACEMENT DECISIONS: A NATIONAL SURVEY EXPERIMENT

Net of controls for educational credentials, recommendations, age, high school quality, employment sector, firm size and region, white personnel officers tend to assign black male high school graduates to lower paying positions than those assigned to white male high school graduates in the USA. Similar patterns are observed for while female college graduates. The effect of job candidates' race on employers' job placement decisions is examined, using data gathered by the randomised vignette technique. These patterns of apparent bias in job placement are found to be offset to some degree in firms with affirmative action policies. The findings are discussed in the context of Thurow's (1975) theory of statistical discrimination. Further research is needed to investigate potential discrimination in job selection and to examine characteristics of firms and personnel officers with the greatest propensity to discriminate.

The criminal investigator's guide : by Steven T. Kernes and Lowell L. Kuehn. Charles C. Thomas, Publisher (2600 South First Street, Springfield, Illinois 62717), 1982, 160 p., softcover—16.75.

Despite a substantial number of police corruption studies founded on Klockars and colleagues' scenario-based vignette survey (2004), little attention has been paid to record-discretion as a type of police misconduct. Goldstein (1977) notes that police corruption is sometimes manifested in insidious forms. Record-discretion is worth investigating because despite its low visibility it potentially affects public confidence in the entire criminal justice system. Using data from South Korean police officers with investigative assignments, we examine the etiology of record-discretion among detectives by focusing on both individual officer characteristics and his/her perceptions of organizational correlates. Significant predictors included investigators' levels of expertise and prior injury experience, prosecutor supervision, media attention, and rule effectiveness. These relationships, however, vary across types of assignment, supporting evidence for the existence of two cultures in policing.

Male and Female Corrections Officers: Personality and Rated Performance

The present data support a personological “type” consistent with Holland's Realistic type and also support the classification of corrections officers in this type. Noteworthy among the characteristics of corrections officers are control, low anxiety, introversion. Personality characteristics predictive of first performance ratings among male officers are intelligence, control, conservatism, and self-sufficiency. Highly rated female officers showed a generally similar pattern, but in addition differed from their male counterparts in being low on dominance and suspicion. Personality characteristics predictive of later performance ratings differed sharply from those predictive of first ratings. An hypothesis of self-selective turnover is offered to explain the variation in predictability over occasions.

Budgeting Strategy: Cross-Sectional versus Longitudinal Models

ment not only on its own practices but also on those of other executive agencies and the legislature. Also, no attempt was made to verify the responses; the research team did not try to validate the extent to which any given state was truly conducting policy analyses. This data has had broad exposure to practitioners and researchers, however, and has been widely reported upon for other purposes. See Mushkin, op. cit.; Robert D. Lee, Jr. and Raymond J. Staffeldt, Executive and Legislature Use of Policy Analysis in the State Budgetary Process: Survey Results, Policy Analysis, 3 (Summer, 1977), pp. 395-504; and Robert D. Lee, Jr. and Raymond J. Staffeldt, Educational Characteristics of State Budget Officers, Public Administration Review, 36 (July/August, 1976), pp. 424-428. Given the structure of the questions, the numerous cross-validating uses reported in the literature, and a lack of reason to challenge the reliability of state budget officers, the authors assume that substantial validity and reliability can be attributed to the data. 22. Because of the nature of the dependent variables, different statistical analyses were required. The variables pertaining to executive decision making allowed for interval level analysis such as multiple regression. The categorical data for the legislative and agency dependent variables required a more robust multivariate method, such as discriminant analysis which allows for the examination of nominal and interval level independent variables. This method also corresponds to regression for the executive analysis. For a more detailed description of the uses and advantages of discriminant analysis over bivariate analysis, see Norman H. Nie, et al., SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 435-444.

Personality characteristics of effective state police officers.

Personality characteristics of effective state police officers.

Causes of Police Behavior: the Current State of Quantitative Research

This paper is a first attempt to organize and codify the findings of quantitative research on four aspects of police behavior: detection, arrest, service, and violence. A framework of five explanatory approaches is used to organize the findings: individual characteristics of police officers; situational, organizational, and community characteristics; and legal variables. The findings generally show weak relationships between a wide range of the hypothesized causes and police behavior, the implica tions of which for building a substantive theory of policing are briefly considered.

A survey of local public health departments and their directors.

In 1974 a questionnaire was mailed to the nation's local health officers. Responses were received from 1,345, at least 68 per cent of all local health departments. The present paper presents selected summary data from respondents concerning the health departments, their jurisdictions, organization, finance, functions, staffing, and about the training, salaries, and other characteristics of local health officers. Health departments are extensively involved in rendering health services, including direct personal services (25 per cent of all departments). For many services the health department is the sole provider of essential services in the area of jurisdiction. These services include ambulatory care (8 per cent), maternal and child health (48.5 per cent), home care (44.8 per cent), and family planning (38 per cent). The major constraints to improvement and expansion of programs are perceived as limited financial support, insufficient staff, and inadequate facilities.

Personality characteristics of juvenile probation officers

This study examined the personality characteristics of juvenile probation officers and drew implications of its findings for the relationship between officers and their delinquent clientele. Twenty-six male probation officers and seven female probation officers were administered the MMPI and the La Forge and Suczek Interpersonal Check List, two components of the Leary Interpersonal Diagnostic System. Probation officers appeared rigidly conventional, controlling and hyperresponsible while idealizing behavior which is oppositional, and unconventional. This supported the hypothesis that probation officers may unwittingly reinforce delinquent behaviors in relationships with delinquent adolescents to achieve various expression of their unconventional feelings and behaviors. Methods for helping officers gain insight into this process were suggested.

The Prehearing Juvenile Report: Probation Officers' Conceptions

Seventy Minnesota probation officers handling juvenile offend ers were asked to rank each section of the prehearing report according to (1) its relative usefulness to them in arriving at appropriate or accurate recommendations of dispositions, and (2) their anticipation of its use by the court. The findings were re lated to biographical characteristics of the probation officers: age, education, professional journals subscribed to and read, opinions regarding the importance of psychological tests and psychiatric examination, job satisfaction, and amount of workload exclusive ly with juvenile offenders. Since a sizable minority (27.2 per cent) did not show significant agreement between their ranking of the report sections in terms of these two considerations, the differ ences in professional identification between two subgroups of the officers were examined for implications of communication and supervision. The majority group, evidencing significant agree ment in ranking the report sections from the two approaches, tended to have a primary professional identification as a proba tion officer ; the smaller subgroup identified professionally with the wider field of social casework.